Business Simulator

Change Order

Kestrel Build Co. is yours.

One crew, four open jobs, a stack of bids, and about $120,000 of work you have already done that nobody has paid you for yet.

Twelve months, one decision each, in the one trade where being profitable and being solvent are almost unrelated. You quote a fixed price on a job whose costs float. You spend your own money building it. You bill in arrears, get paid thirty days after that, and the owner keeps nine percent of every invoice until the very last door stops sticking. The gap between "earned" and "collected" is where this business lives, and it is where most builders die.

Every year plays out differently, with different owners, different surprises, and different numbers on the estimate. But there is no luck in the outcome: once a situation is on screen, every consequence follows from the markup you chose, the scope you documented, and the calendar you agreed to. If the account is empty in September with a hundred and eighty thousand dollars of receivable on the books, that was not bad luck. That was January.